Reviews
January 20, 2009
Après Moi, Le Deluge: A Review of Barton Gellman’s Angler and Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side 0
by Garth Risk Hallberg
For civil libertarians, the inauguration of President Barack Obama augurs not only a brighter future, but a chance to shed light on the recent past. It goes almost without saying that the Bush Administration has, with its declaration of permanent war and attendant claims of executive privilege, sought to move the balance of power in [...]
January 12, 2009
Middlemarch: The Fraught Lives of Women and Men 4
by Kevin Hartnett
It sells Middlemarch short to call it a novel of manners, although if viewed from just one angle it is. The novel describes the precisely ordered life of the eponymous village in feudal England, where every resident can be placed on a grid according to his annual income and the quality of his lineage. [...]
January 12, 2009
Missed Connections: A Review of Philip Hensher’s The Northern Clemency 3
by C. Max Magee
Halfway through Howards End, E.M. Forster describes a certain elm tree as a living symbol of that elusive quality called Englishness. “It was neither warrior, nor lover, nor god,” Forster writes:
In none of these roles do the English excel. It was a comrade, bending over the house, strength and adventure in its roots, but in [...]
December 15, 2008
Manners and Morals in The Death of Ivan Ilych 1
by Kevin Hartnett
The next time you have an hour to read, devote it to Leo Tolstoy’s novella, The Death of Ivan Ilych. It is a brisk and deeply subversive critique of 19th-century Russian society, and Tolstoy states his case with an elegant sensitivity to the theatrics of social life and a breathtaking sweep of moral judgment.
Ivan [...]
December 14, 2008
An Excellent Reason to be Naughty: Lemony Snicket’s The Lump of Coal 0
by Emily Colette Wilkinson
What is not to love about a lump of coal in your Christmas stocking? If it’s Lemony Snicket’s Christmas children’s book for adults The Lump of Coal, I assure you, it is all lovable – even the copyright page (laid out concrete-poetry style in the shape of Christmas tree). The Lump of [...]
December 8, 2008
I Admit, I Didn’t Like “A Walk in the Woods” 1
by Kevin Hartnett
Up in Minnesota this past weekend at my uncle-in-law’s cabin, I picked up a copy of A Walk in the Woods, which for sometime now, my sister has been urging everyone in our family to read.
That the book is very funny is the first thing anyone will tell you about it, and it’s true, I [...]
